87 Responses to this entry

The leftist cant coming out of the World Economic Forum, of all places, is proof positive that race/gender activism is not about 1960s hippie utopianism. It’s a raw power grab, economically and politically. Progressives can’t be obvious about it, though, because pretending they’re utopians is their best and only defense. Openly playing the power competition game might actually open them up to . . . real competition, to which, of course, they will lose.

The leftist cant coming out of the World Economic Forum, of all places, is proof positive that race/gender (add in gay marriage and single mother households) activism is not about 1960s hippie utopianism. It’s a raw power grab, economically and politically.

Or it appears that way to the humans who have reasoned similarly.

Could it be a strategy to weaken/destroy human concepts about biological identity in order for Capital to make Labor more easily specialized and liquid?

1) By normalizing behavior that is antithetical to the identity of humans as biological beings. If humans are biological beings, a human cannot choose to be male or female.

2) By severing the chain of paternity and maternity that link humans to their biological ancestors. Gay-marriage transforms the family from the embodiment of this principle into something primarily concerned with taxes and spousal rights regarding assets and health care (which is actually a specific asset).

Race-based identity politics related to egalitarian ideals are further instances of both preceding instances. If humans are biological beings, race is not a “choose-able” trait. If humans are part of a biological chain of ancestry, “blank slate-ism” fails.

And anyway, you (tellingly?) didn’t quote the last part of my comment, which was really the whole point: Openly playing the power competition game might actually open them up to . . . real competition, to which, of course, they will lose.

However, I disagree that the reason it is allowed is because progressives are good at plausible deniability. It appears the reason progressives are allowed to gain power in this way is precisely due to an even greater accumulation of benefit to another party.

Do you find this applicable:

considering…problems in isolation is like playing Go in one corner. Go players use to say those who dont know Go will play all his life in one corner (tsumego). there is always trade, to get something you have to sucrifice something. -SVErshov

The Alrenous link is quite humorous given some of the recent discussions on this board.

The first question to ask to unravel the strange logic employed: are/were slave owners parasites?

Second, “Parasite classes raise their costs above their benefits” is a retarded statement. The “classes” in question aren’t “parasites” to the “host classes” until that exact moment when they “raise their costs above their benefits.”

Third, “Rebellion —> The parasite class will collapse” is about as progressive as it gets.

And most importantly (and related to the amerika article on Capitalism), some may want to digest this statement:

“Intelligence optimization is desirable as a transcendental value to be pursued regardless of its cost to all other values” is parasitic because, being alien to reasoning based on the achievement of the host, it does not serve the interests of the host.

and Admins reply:

Life has almost certainly been guided by automatic processes to defend itself against this eventuality. It’s a difficult problem, especially when you can’t rely on brains to help solve it — and as you note, they’re the start of the problem.

To side with ‘your’ genes (the host) against ‘your’ brain (the semi-shackled parasite) is more perverse than it might initially appear.

Great sentence. You have stated that your writings make your position regarding Capital and humanity clear, but posts like these are excellent (to say nothing of whether your readers properly appreciate them).

In that spirit of clearing things up (formalizing, you might say), I will give you a scenario and the way it appears you would respond. If you would then offer your commentary, it will be appreciated.

Scenario: An alien race which appears to every human as far superior in terms of technological domination (our main proxy for intelligence optimization) approaches Earth and begins blasting away every human it sees. Humans, so concerned with “genes” as we are, begin fighting back. We find out that these aliens appear to be some sort of biological beings (IOW, it appears we can kill them).

Hypothesis of how Admin would respond: Humans must stop attempting to kill the aliens and allow them to remove all humans. The aliens, to all appearances, have optimized their intelligence processes to a far greater degree and also appear to have made the decision that human existence confers no additional benefit. Therefore, even a single dead alien is one too many.

An alien entity appears, offering the prospect of uploading human intelligences into a simulation system in which — qua intelligences — they acquire far greater capacities (digitally precise memory, self-editing functions, opportunities for experimental cognitive escalation, copying, mind-module trading …) at the cost of the complete eradication of their bio-replicator foundations (genetic reproduction). Do they resist in the name of their biological species integrity, or switch over to the matrix?

Different T Reply:February 7th, 2016 at 6:41 pm

We can address that. But first, will you respond to the scenario presented?

admin Reply:February 7th, 2016 at 6:44 pm

The biological conservatism of these ‘aliens’ makes it hard for me to construe the scenario as plausible. (We’re almost beyond that stage ourselves, already.)

If pressed, I’d go for: If they can be fought, fight them. (In the worst case, it will at least toughen them up.)

Different T Reply:February 7th, 2016 at 6:47 pm

Again, will you address the scenario as presented?

Different T Reply:February 7th, 2016 at 6:50 pm

And this response still fits in within the value system presented as ““Intelligence optimization is desirable as a transcendental value to be pursued regardless of its cost to all other values?”

admin Reply:February 7th, 2016 at 6:52 pm

Sure. Competition is the greatest contribution to intelligence optimization that anything can ever make.

Imagine you’re a game program, testing an emergent super-intelligence. Do you:
(a) Quiver in awe before its superiority, and resign pre-emptively, or
(b) Do your best to give it a hard time.
There can’t be any question about which response is the most IO-positive in this case, can there? (It seems to me a highly-generalizable scenario.)

Different T Reply:February 7th, 2016 at 7:00 pm

Competition is the greatest contribution to intelligence optimization that anything can ever make.

Yet you do not desire humanity to utilize a “gene-based” perspective (you call it “perverse”)?

No. I count on humans waging gene-based resistance to indigenous terrestrial replicator usurpation (also, less relevantly, ‘extraterrestrials’). Riling up humans to inaugurate Anthropol and fight back hard against what’s coming is probably the single most consistent ‘praxis’ I’m engaged in.

On your last sentence, of course I disagree, for reasons fully explicated in this (short) exchange.

Different T Reply:February 7th, 2016 at 7:07 pm

This is how your “perspective” is now appearing:

Intelligence optimization is desirable as transcendental value to humans even at the expense of all other values humans may possess.
Things that increase intelligence optimization are therefore desirable.
Competition from differing value systems increase intelligence optimization.
Therefore, competition from value systems that do not place “intelligence optimization” as prime value are desirable, and intelligence optimization is desirable at the expense of all competing value systems.

Last sentence appears to be non-sensical.

admin Reply:February 7th, 2016 at 7:09 pm

“Intelligence optimization is desirable as transcendental value to humans” — this is where you’re getting confused.

Different T Reply:February 7th, 2016 at 7:17 pm

this is where you’re getting confused.

You are right.

When you originally wrote and agreed with the statement “Intelligence optimization is desirable as transcendental value to be pursued regardless of its cost to all other values,” who were you referring to? Who was to be doing the “pursuing?”

Different T Reply:February 8th, 2016 at 5:01 pm

Also, stating that humanity’s allegiance to their “genes” (or biological replicators) is perverse while in the same breath stating that this human allegiance is IO (through competition with a system that places its allegiance strictly with IO), does not inspire confidence about the internal integrity of your reasoning.

If you are not speaking of a human value system, from whom does the judgment “To side with ‘your’ genes (the host) against ‘your’ brain (the semi-shackled parasite) is more perverse than it might initially appear” come?

If your descriptions are accurate, it does not appear an IO-based value system would even consider this human allegiance as neutral, let alone perverse (as your description states it would be IO).

All of these mental gymnastics as just an attempt to avoid the appearance of that “human” tendency to seek out and preach the values you desire (IOW, to avoid saying “I, Mr. Land, want….”)?

admin Reply:February 8th, 2016 at 5:31 pm

“I, X, want” is self-demolishing. Name a single proposition in history that took this form. That should be “a single proposition in history worth a moment’s consideration”, unless it comes with means-of-payment attached.

There are a whole bunch of things “I, Nick Land, want”. I’m not going to waste anyone’s time by enumerating them. Psychological reduction of propositions is a way to ignore them. Better to simply ignore them, if that’s your inclination.

Different T Reply:February 8th, 2016 at 5:40 pm

“I, America, want equal opportunity for all citizens.”

“I, Richard Dawkins, want a world without religion.”

“I, Mr. Christian, want to follow God’s word.”

“I, Mr. Fat-person, want to be healthier.”

“I, Kant, want humans to follow my categorical imperative.”

admin Reply:February 8th, 2016 at 5:53 pm

That’s simply a way to avoid considering any of those propositions with the slightest seriousness. Even the most despicable ideas deserve better than that.

Different T Reply:February 8th, 2016 at 5:45 pm

Psychological reduction of propositions is a way to ignore them. Better to simply ignore them, if that’s your inclination.

So to be clear, you do not see a lack of internal integrity with regard to

Also, stating that humanity’s allegiance to their “genes” (or biological replicators) is perverse while in the same breath stating that this human allegiance is IO (through competition with a system that places its allegiance strictly with IO)

admin Reply:February 8th, 2016 at 5:51 pm

Nullius in verba includes Muh verba too. There would be nothing but reciprocal monkey squealing if that wasn’t true.

Different T Reply:February 8th, 2016 at 5:59 pm

That’s simply a way to avoid considering any of those propositions with the slightest seriousness. Even the most despicable ideas deserve better than that.

Wow. Thanks.

That makes our differences even more stark. I do not consider a statement of “I, X, want…” to, in any way, invalidate what follows or end the “serious” consideration of those values.

admin Reply:February 8th, 2016 at 6:18 pm

If you want something to be true, it might still be true, but the likelihood of it being so is significantly reduced.

Different T Reply:February 8th, 2016 at 7:24 pm

Again, wow. That statement has some pretty impactful implications.

So let us just go directly to the crux of the matter.

Do you agree with the statement “Life is undesirable”?

Different T Reply:February 10th, 2016 at 6:59 pm

For archival integrity

So to be clear, you do not see a lack of internal integrity with regard to:

“Also, stating that humanity’s allegiance to their “genes” (or biological replicators) is perverse while in the same breath stating that this human allegiance is IO (through competition with a system that places its allegiance strictly with IO)”

Yes, but not on their slaves, on the society at large which has to subsidize dangerous and low-quality labor, especially the policing it requires. Antebellum South conscripted white men to find missing niggers, and that’s why the Confederacy can go fuck itself.

Different T Reply:February 7th, 2016 at 10:15 pm

@ R. J. Moore II: For future reference, there is no need for you to read or respond to anything written by me.

If it’s not rhetorical there will be more detail to why you asked. If you’ve done your due diligence there should be multiple models of what I meant to say, which don’t make sense to you for various reasons.

i think hes celebrating the decoupling of state monopoly of violence and capitals recapture of it.its a sign of state failure and patch asembly. Nerds dont fight well so they would be stupid which by definition they are not to do their own fighting,Now if you had pointed out the inconsistency of the trend to the knights they wish to emulate or its inconsistency with the patriarchy and HBD that is held in esteem ,or the missing piece where collapse leads to NRx you would have a point,so far no points.

The actual patriarchy and individualist-elitist culture of real European history, and its failure, is clearly at odds with letting middle-class types and nerds (priests) rule. Warlords are the most important part of Tripartite classical + medieval civilization. They can’t be replaced by money grubbers and cultists.

The article by the Chinesian confirms much of my Race-y thoughts, and is part of the reason I’m a Sinophile. Chinese, Japanese + Koreans are not innovators on the Aryan scale but they’re also less prone to go Full Retard.

I remember reading WWII history and it was clear to me that the sides that were capitalist and nationalist had the best future, where everyone else was trying to take control before the walls fell in. Great list of links and thank you for including us so generously. Now drinking Early Grey smoking Hal O’ The Wynd, and perusing this treasure trove of ideas….

I remember reading WWII history and it was clear to me that the sides that were capitalist and nationalist had the best future

This seems to imply the question:

Were those “capitalistic” countries’ better futures due to the imposition of limits (or subjugation) on those “capitalistic” tendencies (ie. “nationalist” tendencies) or in spite of them? And what of the reverse (capitalistic tendencies limiting nationalistic tendencies)?

The fact that Roosh, a sub-100 IQ Arab or near-Arab, is doing more for the right than the whitest of whitey virgin internet trolls, I think, confirms that masculinity rather than race or any other proxy valuation (@admin “muh intelligence optimisation”) is the bedrock of the right.

“Kariba’s collapse, like Mosul’s, would constitute an epochal event in the history of energy development—the dam industry’s Chernobyl. The ensuing torrent would be four times bigger than the Zambezi’s biggest recorded flood, in 1958, and would release enough water to knock over another major dam three hundred miles downstream, in Mozambique. At least three million people live in the flood’s path; most would die or lose their crops or possessions. About forty per cent of the electricity-generating capacity of twelve southern African nations would be eliminated.”
——-

Fuk, sounds like the black-swan of cascading feedbaks that could unleash the mother of all migration Tsunamis.

“Asymmetric warfare only works when the weaker party has political protection.”

Which party is weaker?

Well?

That’s actually unknown. Neither side is fighting. The side that you probably think is stronger – that being the Cathedral – Progressive governments is bringing in proxies to do their dirty work. Can you claim that is the actions of the stronger party?

The Cathedral has it’s organs of force and defense standing down to allow invasion by reinforcements. The natives aren’t yet fighting. If the Cathedral is so strong why isn’t it doing it’s own dirty work?

Again – If the Cathedral is so strong why isn’t it doing it’s own dirty work?

This is a good point, and what the Red/Grey anarcho-fascists have that the Cathedral doesn’t is the direct pairing – often in the same individual – of macho gunmen and intellectual effort. The Cathedral is ALL faggots hiring Red mercenaries to protect them.

Ah, OK, ending conscription is the culprit. Nice. Is the draft going to make a comeback? I think I’ve been reading more progressive approval of it recently; the “WW2 draft brought us together as a nation” schmaltz is already in place, and the threat of being dragooned into jungle warfare has long faded. Open Borders fan Nathan Smith recently wrote (http://openborders.info/blog/billion-immigrants-continuing-conversation/) that under an Open Borders regime “threats of revolt might lead to the conscription of natives into a domestic police force, but while some might find that unpleasant, it’s not a case of falling living standards.”

Conscription of women would also allow USG to signal harder how dedicated they are to Feminism, although I’m pretty sure current efforts are actually passive-aggressive concern trolling by flag officers too cowed to openly voice opposition to the orthodoxy.

Europe and tech: I think it is not simply the usual culprits (taxation, regulation). There is something beyond that. Have you seen Wakanda, a largely French product? http://play.wakanda.org/ I think it is excellent, there was always a sore need for dev environments where business apps can be churned out real quickly for internal use, something like CA-Clipper, MS Access or FoxPro, just modern and better, and it does the job perfectly. And yet they cannot sell it. There is WinDream.de, a German product, which is the least annoying document management software meant for businesses ever, because instead of using a client software to check in your latest Word document, you just save it to a virtual drive and it does the rest. And yet they cannot sell it.

Part of the story is Europeans sucking at sales. But maybe it is also lack of capital?

Seriously at least the Valley should buy these, why don’t they prowl the world for interesting products / business to buy?

But maybe another problem. Just like SAP, these two are for essentially business administration. The Valley is into making cool stuff for consumers mostly. While Oracle is definitely in the Valley, Oracle Financials has never been a flagship of Silicon Valley culture. Nor was JD Edwards or similar American products. To be fair America kind of tends to suck in business admin software. Oracle Financials is passable, but all too often internal apps are written in clumsy Java Tomcat whatever instead of using a Wakanda type quick 4GL. Navision / MS Dynamics-NAV, a Danish product is pushed in America because in business software the competition is not very strong.

So maybe Americans are not so interested in business admin software because their business is far more dynamic? Europeans like them because business is very ossified so easier to cover with standardized apps?

My point is, there are products made, albeit business products. But somehow Europeans suck at selling them.

Euros can’t sell because they no longer believe in Europe. Getting a European to believe in the future of Europe is like getting the average Cambodian to believe in the Khmer Empire coming back. There are at least some Silicon Valley DYELs who never halfway through The Great Gatsby (“Literature? Lmao, keystrokes = guaranteed job. What is the ‘real economy’? I’m gonna be LMAOing at all of you “physical world” plebs when I’m rocking the turtleneck and pimping my $1B grage startup! Y-y-y-you know Isaac Newton never had sex either!”) And still believe in muh American Dream. They can sell.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that the Japanese and the Germans are terrific engineers but terrible coders. Already mentioned is the fact that Germany has no large internet-tech companies to its credit. And have you ever browsed the Japanese internet? It’s like taking the Wayback Machine to 2006 — or earlier. The web in Japan is at least 10 years behind the rest of the world. That’s no joke, no exaggeration.

And yet, with that said, every piece of precision-engineered equipment I buy comes from Germany or Japan. German companies like Netzsch have no equal anywhere. And there are innovative and useful pieces of equipment that are available in Japan that I’ve never been able to find elsewhere — for example, the wet-jet mill. (I’m a materials/chemistry guy, so do a lot of business with Germany and Japan, and am in fact writing this from the Tokyo airport.)
I’d also note that spark-plasma sintering machines — for densifying metal and ceramic powders — are only manufactured in Germany and Japan. The Chinese keep trying, but they can’t seem to make SPS furnaces successfully!

My theory is that the Japanese and German temperaments are well-suited to the rigors of engineering, but are not well-suited to the abstraction demanded by computer programming. And perhaps the fact that most popular programming languages are high-level languages [at least ostensibly] based on English also works against them.

…The Israelis, however, appear to really “get” programming & the internet. (See also: the cyber–security link.) People like Scott Aaronson also really get it. I wonder if verbal vs. visuospatial IQ has something to do with it.

(Aside: Douthat’s article is very poorly written and edited. He should not have used the word “decadence” at all — the word “decline” makes more sense in his context, is more forceful, and is much more simple. The word “decadence”, in its modern use, carries artistic and cultural connotations — and we’re long past cultural decadence; that particular decline started decades ago.)

But the regulatory environment in Europe is not bad at all. Generally, the software industry isn’t heavily regulated — and it is, of course, obviously quite difficult to regulate. Furthermore, although the tax burden for wage-slaves in Europe is excessively high, the advent of the EU has opened the door to a wide variety of tax-avoidance schemes for entrepreneurs. (Simple, unsophisticated example: A German programmer can easily register a new corporation in a business friendly nation, such as Ireland; can then open a German subsidiary for this new corporation; can then work and open an office in Germany via this subsidiary. The subsidiary can shuffle revenue to the HQ in Ireland and take a loss, on-paper, thus minimizing its German tax burden.)
…It is possible to sidestep regulations in the same manner. If I were a software entrepreneur and faced the choice of incorporating in the EU or the USA, I’d pick the EU in a heartbeat.

The regulatory environment in Japan isn’t that bad, either. They have a terrible “export control” system, so they have lots of trouble exporting industrial equipment and machinery, but this doesn’t apply to most forms of software. Their corporate tax rate is relatively high, but is edging lower — and it’s not quite as bad as their high-bracket income tax, at any rate! (Besides, given how the Japanese entertain clients, I’m sure that businesses can easily claim a hell of a lot of deductions. Done wisely, this can reduce a company’s tax burden dramatically.)

As for business culture: Certainly it’s a contributing factor, particularly for the Japanese, but I don’t think that it explains everything. There’s no shortage of Japanese inventors who work solo. In certain fields of science and engineering (for instance, new metal alloy development, robotics, biomimetics,) Japanese scientists and inventors are second to none. They also make very decent entrepreneurs in the areas of their expertise. And yet they don’t have a single decent internet company to their credit. Their largest such company, Rakuten, is a transparent Amazon/eBay/Alibaba ripoff, founded years after Amazon.com became a media sensation. Their other top companies are similarly frail and dated imitations of foreign offerings. Yahoo! is still extremely popular in Japan, for heaven’s sake!

It’s also worth noting that we cannot simply point fingers at the fact that Germany and Japan are far-removed from the epicenters of venture capital activity, and thus do not have access to seed capital; Israel is at least as distant from Silicon Valley, but has managed to attract quite a lot of attention and now punches well above its weight.

I actually think that ethno-cultural characteristics may have a lot to do with it. A bias towards risk-aversion (which would be quite recent — grounded in European socialism in one case, and in conformist Japanese salaryman culture in the other,) along with a cultural or ethnic bias towards working with the physical over the abstract.
…Of course, this is anything but a scientific or firm conclusion. And I have neither the time nor the inclination to investigate this to any further extent.

That aside, your examples miss the mark, I think:
Both Brin and Page are Jewish. Brin is, in fact, the more Jewish of the two.
Wozniak is famous for his skill at hardware engineering, not for writing software or anticipating the internet.

Are there any cases, from the whole planet and whole of its history, when some kind of government intervention or pulling anything non-libertarian actually increased competition, did not stifle it? Is there a generic pattern to it and could one build a post-libertarianism on top of that?

The breakup of AT&T.
There is also the long term vs short term view of competition in the case of tariffs.
I ran into this https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economy-of-ancient-greece/ what I found interesting was how it pointed out their higher value for leisure time. I have noticed that the more capitalistic the culture, the less it values leisure.
The authoritarian regimes of the Asian Tigers put heavy public funding into education, though that had it’s own set of externalities.

Competition, like the will to power, never stops. It’s the changing incentives and the tendency to accept existing environments that’s to blame for negative trends, rather than any ‘lack of competition’.

Edward Snowden is being touted as a potential Peace Prize candidate (ie Cathedralist Good Goy Gold Star for Top Effort). He’s also someone WashCorp would likely execute and dispose of as quietly as possible if they could get their hands on him.

I will not specify as to who should do the nuking (GOOD LUCK IRANCHAN XDDDDD) but I challenge any NRxoid to disagree with the proposition that a thorough nuking of every Turkish structure apart from the Hagia Sophia and its immediate surrounds would be an immense public good (are public goods fascist? Oh well)

On the topic of the German stellarator, anyone else notice an uptick in pro-fusion coverage from the Cathedral’s consent-manufacturing organs? Last November, fusion power made the cover of Time Magazine, for Gnon’s sake.

Looks like factional infighting in the Cathedral. Yes, it’s uniformly anti-oil (because Texans & Okies, and not Boston Brahmans, got richer and more powerful investing in oil), but there are two factions coalescing around different post-oil policies.

One imagines some combination of windmills, negawatts, and social engineering will maintain as much of our accustomed lifestyle as we deserve. (On its far left, this faction shades into “five billion people should die off” or “see how white people enjoy slavery from the other end”).

The other faction is smarter, or numerate enough, to realize that Western societies require plentiful energy to remain worth lording over. Without hydrocarbons, only fission, solar, or fusion could provide that plentiful energy.

Both theory and practice make clear fission could provide it, but the Cathedral has spent four decades demonizing fission. “Eurasia has always been at war with Eastasia” aside, it takes a lot of effort for a propaganda supertanker to change course.

Next, in theory, solar could do it, but still requires a lot of R&D to bring down costs, is most desired by Cathedralites living at high latititude and under frequent cloud cover, and is too decentralized for the Cathedral’s taste.

That leaves fusion. Pollution is even more negligible than fission, the energy content of a gallon of water is immense, and entities like the Don’t Be Evil Empire would love to have shipping-container-sized fusion reactors powering its server farms instead of relying on a distributed photovoltaic grid.

Are these pro-fusion articles harbingers of an energy-policy Thermidor?

From your perspective, does it appear fusion is an economical alternative (or even close) when considering infrastructure, etc?

This largely appears like the 2000’s solar push. To call that a “new-money” grab wouldn’t be completely off. And like you said, the “Don’t Be Evil Empire” has plenty of motivation and cash to invest in projects with government subsidies.

I have no idea how far away we are from $0.05/kWh fusion-generated electricity. Let’s say 20 years. Even if the German stellerator or the Lockheed Martin back-of-truck reactors yielded a working prototype tomorrow, 20 years is a reasonable guess for overcoming NIMBYism, environmental regulation, OPEC-funded anti-fusion astroturf mass protests, etc. to turn working prototypes into gigawatts of grid capacity.

(The Don’t Be Evil Empire will bulldoze or buy off any weak opposition it might get from rural Kansas people living near its server farm, so you’ll see fusion power in that off-grid use first).

Seems like any competent investor would do enough due diligence to see this is a more expensive field with a more distant payoff than the solar bubble last decade. The only investment angle that makes sense to Wall Street I can see is a crony capitalism play, invest in Fusion Startup and then get the Federales to decree Fusion Startup as the only game in town. Uh, country.

Even if the fusion bubble fails, it may have the benefit of making fission more palatable. When Time publishes factoids like “France has generated 80% of its electricity from fission for decades without harm to people or the environment” and the windmills-and-negawatts crowd is consigned to page 50 of the Don’t Be Evil Empire’s search results, the energy-policy Thermidor will be nigh.

The demonization of fission is a massive pet peeve for people who actually care about energy science, the Cathedral’s narrative on power (in general) is so completely full of shit only a college graduate could take it seriously. Fission power is clearly superior, and is winning out, and will continue you, whether the West likes it or not. The west can use nukes or fall behind Asia’s upward-sloping power/cost ratios.

At some point, we’ll run out. Having visited a fracking site (the closest you can get to an asteroid mine while remaining on Earth), I think that point is decades away. As the OPEC countries run out of easily-extractable reserves and run up the costs for their ever-burgeoning welfare states, their ability to astroturf US opposition to fracking will decline.

Regarding carbon emissions, all else being equal, the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more heat will be retained. Whether all else is equal, or at what point more heat in the atmosphere will be a net negative for humankind, I don’t know. It would be pleasant to see some actual science, instead of media-academic propagandizing, to answer those questions. In either event, I strongly suspect by 2020 we’ll see a decline in alarmism about “global warming” and “climate change,” offset by a huge spike in alarmism about “ocean acidification.”

As the OPEC countries run out of easily-extractable reserves and run up the costs for their ever-burgeoning welfare states, their ability to astroturf US opposition to fracking will decline.

It is interesting to note some countries already subsidize the cost of oil to domestic consumers (mostly OPEC countries), which would indicate that expensive oil could be the beneficiary of subsidy instead of alternatives sources. Given that Obama recently proposed an increase in the tax on oil, this does seem unlikely.